Occupy Wall Street has instigated a series of female-led meetings where only women can speak. Photograph: John Minchillo/AP

At a gathering of Occupy Wall Street activists at a public space in New York on Monday, one young woman spoke of a bruising experience she had suffered the previous day. Angry and upset, she said she had been shouted down while attempting to facilitate a general assembly. There were nods of recognition and murmurs of sympathy from those seated in a circle around her.

But her battle was not with police officers or security guards. Instead, those who had treated her with disdain were fellow activists, every one of which was white and male.

"It was a really distressing experience having people policing and patronising me" she told the group.

In the aftermath of the eviction from their camp in lower Manhattan, the organisers of Occupy Wall Street are struggling to maintain order at the general assembly, the backbone of its decision-making.

At its heart was an "ongoing crisis for people of colour, women and the marginalised", according to Kanene Holder, a part-time teaching artist from Brooklyn who is active on several working groups.

Kanene Holder

"White males are used to speaking and running things," said Holder. "You can't expect them to abdicate the power they have just because they are in this movement."

One of the defining features of the leaderless Occupy movement – aside from the occupation itself – has been its horizontal decision-making in the form of its Arab spring-inspired general assembly. The simple idea behind it: that everyone has a voice.

But a quick glance through the paper, television and web coverage spawned since Occupy's first march on Wall Street in September reveals that some voices are louder than others. While images of women as victims have endured, those who speak about the ideas and actions have been predominantly male.

Yet women are everywhere in Occupy, of a ratio more in keeping with the 51% they represent in society at large than mainstream political parties or indeed Congress, where female representation is at a paltry 17%.

Those who spoke to the Guardian talked about a daily struggle to maintain their presence and ensure they were heard.

Various ideas designed to redress the balance – such as "progressive stacks", where minority voices are given priority to speak, and "caucuses", where decisions deemed inappropriate to women, people of colour and the LGBT community are blocked – were not enough, they said.

This week marked an important step. On Monday, after a number of women complained of "overly aggressive" men dominating events, OWS has, for the first time, instigated a series of female-led meetings where only women can speak. It was an opportunity for "males to listen and for female marginalised voices to be heard," Holder said.

The meeting at Wall Street, attended by around 20 women and 15 unusually silent men, was the first such gathering.

"There is a high level of awareness to include female voices" said Holder, who said the women-led meeting was voted on and agreed to by men.

At that point, as if to underline the issue, a commotion broke out as a white man burst into the centre of the female-led circle, demanding to speak, and angrily accusing all around him of sexism and racism.

"I'm allowed to speak," he shouted, as another man tried to usher him out of the circle. "You're allowed to be sexist? To get away with this crap?"

Holder insisted: "There is a learning curve. It exists because privilege is learned over a lifetime and cannot be erased overnight."

Many female activists who spoke to the Guardian said they were seeking to examine gender issues, not just within the movement but also within themselves.

Part of the reason for the dominance of male voices, they said, was because men tended to place more emphasis on speaking to the media at the expense of other projects. They too, had work to do to stop "giving away power", they said.

Linnea Palmer Paton

Linnea Palmer Paton, 23, from Connecticut, a volunteer with OWS's press team, said: "Sometimes there are interviews that I would really, really like to do, but when I put myself out there to do them I always say: 'I can do it, unless someone else wants to'. This doesn't come across as a definite answer. It sounds like I'm asking for others' permission."

Palmer Paton, a graduate at New York University studying urban planning, said she is learning to "step up more".

Jillian Buckley, a graduate from Brooklyn who is working part-time as a nanny, agreed. She said: "It's always tricky walking the line between doing that you feel like as an individual, and doing what's best for the collective."

Palmer Paton argued that the Occupy movement is already more democratic than the prevailing US political system.

"Congress is run by majority wins, so minority voices may not be heard and valued. Here we might not have got rid of all forms of oppression, but we are talking about it. We are aware of historical repression we don't want to do anything that would lead to further marginalisation."

Rebecca Traister, author of Big Girls Don't Cry: The Election that Changed Everything for American Women" about the 2008 election, said: "This idea that, by its nature, left-wing activism is inclusive is a myth. The left is continually plagued by gender problems.

"It is not that women are invisible. There were the women who were pepper-sprayed by the cop in New York, the woman who miscarried after being pepper-sprayed … when I saw the image of the 84-year-old political activist, Dorli Rainey, who was also pepper-sprayed, I thought that was going in a female victim direction, too.

Traister referred to the controversial blog "Hot chicks of Occupy", which provoked discussion on whether it was sexist – or whether it could be seen as a tool to promote discussion.

"I mean, come on. Diminishing a serious social movement to a discussion over whether or not they're sexy?" said Traister.

She compared it to the second wave of feminism during the civil rights movement where women were often seen as "secretarial or sexual, yet they were fully participating." But she added: "I'm pleased that, just two and a half months in, women are talking about it."

Manissa McCleave Maharawal, 28, from Brooklyn, is at the forefront of fighting racism in the movement. In October, she was responsible for blocking OWS's first declaration as "alienating" to people of colour in a move that led to the caucuses, and has written movingly about it in a blog. She said that racism and sexism were ongoing challenges, but women within the movement had given her hope.

"I've come across so many amazing, strong activists, women organisers in this movement, more than I've seen in my life" said McCleave Maharawal, a facilitator and outreach worker with a PhD in anthropology graduate from the City University of New York.

"Historically, in activism women are doing the work at the photocopiers and putting the fires out, and men are the ones doing the theorising and politicking or being more radical than thou. I don't feel that is true here.

"This is a movement that takes its process seriously. In this movement the theorising is so much a part of the process, and women are so much a part of the process, that it is less divided than outside. I've felt more empowered to be politically theorising or to be commenting that I ever have before. That doesn't come easily and that comes because of women."